In this chapter, environmental problems which the bee industry
is likely to face will be discussed in some detail, and, where
possible, suggestions will be made on ways and means of
counteracting them. These problems are grouped into three
categories: natural climatic conditions, man and his activities,
and natural pests.

The amount of annual rainfall and the temperature of an area
exert a great influence on the life and work output of the
honeybee. The insect has been called a "summer bird",
for it performs most energetically at relatively high
temperatures, up to 35°C. Its activity slows when the
temperature drops below 20°C, and bees will not move at all
below 8°C. Fortunately, such low temperatures are rare in
Africa.

At low temperatures, comb building ceases. Bees remain indoors
and cluster to generate heat to keep themselves warm. To fan
themselves or to cluster, they need fuel to burn; honey fuel
allows them to perform these functions. Therefore, if one of
these two activities is allowed to continue for long, field bees
will not fetch food and other necessities of life, and the colony
will have to depend on honey stored in the comb cells. The same
phenomenon occurs during rainfall or the rainy season. Indeed,
honey stored is for consumption during bad weather such as the
chilly rainy season. If bees are confined because of unfavourable
weather, an average colony may consume as much as 1.4 kg of honey
in a day. Should this continue, whole stores of honey may be
completely depleted and the colony will face famine.

On the other hand, temperatures above 37°C are equally
unfavourable for the honeybee. At very high temperatures, combs
begin to melt and most of the bees in the hive will move out and
fan themselves and the brood nest frantically. At such
temperatures, bees will spend all their time fetching water to
cool the hive, and nectar collection will cease completely.

It was previously mentioned that the equatorial evergreen
rain-forest area does not support any reasonable beekeeping
activity. In the dense forest regions of Africa, the annual
rainfall may range from 1 500 to as much as 10 000 mm, and the
peak rainy season occurs from mid-June through July. It is at
this period that most bee colonies swarm, and they therefore have
to solve their accommodation problems promptly: if suitable
hollows are not available, the swarm will hang in the open and
drown. The problem of the swarm does not end there. A young
virgin queen leading a secondary swarm must make her mating
flight. A temperature of about 21°C is required for the drone to
leave the hive, while the queen bee flies out at about 24°C. If
the rain continues for a long time and low temperatures persist,
the queen's nuptial flight will be delayed. After a week, the
workers will become angry and may kill her or, if she is allowed
to live, she will begin to lay unfertilized eggs. Once she starts
egg-laying, the nuptial flight cannot take place and that will
spell the doom of the entire colony.

Other problems are also encountered by the honeybee in the
dense equatorial forest:

- Some trees are so tall that worker bees will not visit
them for any reason.
- Tall trees in the equatorial forest have few or no flowers,
so that nectar and pollen are scarce.
- The sun's rays cannot reach the forest floor, the thick
undergrowth prevents the free flow of air, and the
temperatures are too low to induce worker bees to fly out to
procure the commodities essential for the colony.
- High humidity levels promote serious fungal diseases in the
insect.
- High moisture content in the nectar prevents honey from
curing well.
- Ants, reptiles, birds and other hive predators are present
in the forest in large numbers.

It should be noted that the absence of honeybee, from the
forest in adequate numbers hampers adequate pollination, and this
affects crop yields. This explains why some fruit crops (e.g.
mango and orange) cannot perform well in dense forests; even
though the plants grow taller and larger, they always bear less
fruit than might otherwise be expected.

The savannah and semi-arid regions occupy over 50% of Africa's
total area. These regions ideally could support large-scale
commercial beekeeping, because their climatic conditions favour
the honeybee. Almost every shrub and tree found in the region
produces flowers. Grasses are wind-pollinated, but it is common
to find bees visiting some of them, including guinea corn, millet
and maize. These regions have few beekeeping problems, the most
important being inadequate surface water and the dry harmattan
wind.

The density of human population suggests the degree to which
an area is geographically favourable for man and animals, and
also for bees. In general, most arid and desert areas of Africa
are fertile lands which only require water in the form of either
rainfall or irrigation. In Egypt, for example, thanks to the
presence of the Nile River for irrigation, parts of the land
support high-density human settlement. The irrigated areas have
several tree crops and enough water to support abundant bee life.
The days are bright and warm. There is little or no rainfall to
disturb flight activities. There are abundant drought-resistant
plants which when in bloom provide nectar and pollen to support
strong bee colonies.

Sparsely-populated areas, on the other hand, are like the
dense forest regions in that they do not support beekeeping. They
have the same wild plants and warmth as the densely populated
savannah to support the honeybee, but they lack year-round
surface water. In several uninhabited savannah woodland areas of
West Africa, for example, the annual rainfall may exceed 1 000
mm, but the torrential rains come within two months and leave a
long period of the year with barely a shower. The porous soil
cannot retain the rain water for long, and the harmattan winds
aggravate the situation: the dry, thirsty wind drains all
moisture from both the soil and the plants. The trees shed their
leaves quickly, and there are no flowers to support the honeybee.
Colonies which began life during the rainy season quickly migrate
to other regions where they can survive.

The worst of all the enemies of the honeybee is man. In his
attempt to improve his living conditions, man has caused, and is
still causing, great damage to nature. Trees that support bee
life are hacked down, and houses are built on fertile soils which
would support crops. Forage trees and forests which took millions
of years to develop are destroyed in decades. The bee population
is falling off, as their places for food and shelter are being
destroyed through the work of lumbermen, road builders, building
constructors and farmers. The farmer is the most guilty, and he
is also the most severely punished for destroying his own
environment. He has cleared all the bush covering the soil along
the banks of the rivers which provide him with water, thus
exposing the water to direct sunlight and increasing the rate of
evaporation and soil erosion. The catchment areas that our
grandfathers used have been cleared, and the water-tables have
therefore dropped seriously. Drought and famine, which are
causing a mass exodus from the land and untold human suffering in
wide areas, are thus to a great extent the result of man's
careless utilization of the land.

A well-implemented reafforestation programme is the best
-indeed, it is probably the only -- means of halting the
desertification that is threatening ever-larger zones of Africa.
If every able-bodied person in a country of 10 million people
planted only one tree a year, the country would have 100 million
new trees in only 10 years. Beekeepers, however, should set their
own, much higher, targets, planting quick-maturing bee-forage
trees (eucalyptus is perhaps the best) to cover once again the
banks of streams and rivers and all other areas known to have
water-tables. They should also plant fruit crops that, with the
help of the honeybee, could yield fruit, honey and beeswax for
man. Many apiaries could be sited in such man-made forests. The
bees would find their food and water naturally, while man would
gain several immediate advantages and lay a sound foundation for
future generations.

The honey-hunter

As mentioned very early in Chapter 1, honey-hunters using
outdated, barbaric methods are a terrible danger to the bees. Not
only do they deliberately kill many of them, but as they cut down
trees to take the colonies' combs, they destroy the tree hollows
that are the bees' natural home. The colonies are thus forced to
hang outdoors, exposed to all their natural enemies. And if the
bees are destroyed, they cannot fertilize flowering crops, and
this again contributes to famine conditions.

For all these reasons, the activities of the traditional
honey-tapper, the main present supplier of honey in most African
countries, should be very strictly controlled. Governments should
not only regulate honey-hunting and enforce the regulations once
made, but should also make serious efforts to instruct
honey-tappers in the newer, more efficient ways of honey-hunting,
as well as to encourage them to keep bees themselves.

Bush-burning

One of the greatest problems in the savannah and the
transitional forest zones is bush-burning. This practice is
rampant during the dry season (generally from November to Hay).
Some obvious reasons for bush-burning are (i) to clear the land
for farming (ii) and to clear the bush and make hunting easy. The
honeybee population suffers greatly from such fires' in a wild
fire that consumes an area of 250 square kilometres, with only
one colony for every 10 hectares, about 125 million bees could be
destroyed.

The beekeeper must guard his hives against bush fires. Before
the dry season, he should make a fire belt around the apiary and
visit it as frequently as possible, removing any fallen wood or
leaves which could spread a fire on the site.

Bee-burning

Where water is scarce during the dry season, the honeybee
makes life difficult for man. The streams disappear, and it
becomes necessary to travel several miles to fetch a head-load of
water for domestic purposes. At the same time, the temperature is
high, and the harmattan wind drains all moisture from the
honeycomb. There are larvae to feed, and this requires water, but
the honeybee can only travel three kilometres. If she cannot find
water in the streams, then that bucketful of water which the
villager has collected must be snatched away. The bees will lay
claim to-it in large numbers. Returning from the farm late in the
evening, the exhausted, thirsty farmer finds that his only bucket
of water has been drained by the bees. What is more, the bees
harass the women pounding grain. In extreme cases, they try to
suck human sweat, and this results in a scuffle.

In some places, therefore, the villagers hunt the bees and
burn them. In one village in Ghana, a government officer said,

"We deliberately burn them in order that we can live
peacefully in this area."

Bees must be watered in the same manner as birds are watered
on a poultry farm. The surest way to prevent bee-burning is to
provide a regular water supply for bees as well as for human
consumption in the dry season. In planning a beekeeping project
in the savannah area, it is essential to provide adequate water
for bees as well as for humans, in order to prevent bee attacks
from causing loss of life or other serious inconvenience.

The palm-vine tapper

The palm tree produces a sweet, refreshing liquid which is
drunk by man in many tropical countries. The honeybee also
refreshes herself with this type of wine from the pot of the
wine-tapper. The honeybee begins to leave the hive as early as 5
a.m. The wine-tapper usually makes sure he reaches his wine very
early, but by the time he removes his first pot of wine from the
tree, many bees have already been there. They fill themselves
with wine and become tipsy. In extreme cases, the whole pot of
wine is consumed, and many bees drown. The wine-tapper, furious
at the sight of the countless bees lying in the wine pot,
sometimes collects all the bees and throws them away or kills
them. If he assumes that the motionless, tipsy bees are dead, he
does them no further harm. However, most of the bees left
unmolested will eventually recover and return to the hive.

In general, drunken bees are like human drunkards. They work
less and produce little honey. Apiaries should therefore not be
set up near places where vine-tapping is in progress. Colonies
may dwindle in size and may perish completely as the insects are
burned, crushed or drowned.

Poisoning bees

As the honeybee visits plants during her search for nectar or
pollen, she flies from one plant and flower to another. Sometimes
the insect unknowingly lands on a poisonous plant or contacts a
poisonous pesticide which the farmer has sprayed to protect his
crops. (According to a report published in 1973, out of 399
pesticides, 20% were highly toxic to bees, 15% were moderately
toxic and 65% were relatively non-toxic.) Pollen collectors may
carry this poisoned pollen into the hive and store it for future
use by the bee brood. As long as the poisonous pollen remains in
the cells, it poses a dangerous threat. It may kill both adults
and brood, either by contact or by ingestion. This intensive
hazard of pesticide poisoning sometimes overshadows all other
problems, for example when an entire orchard is sprayed by
aircraft. Beekeepers are strongly advised to keep their hives
away from sprayed fields.

The greatest natural enemies of the honeybee are all types of
ants: driver, tailor, black, red, brown, large or small, all are
dangerous to the hive. They eat sweets such as nectar, honey,
sugar and the bee's body. They like to live in hollows like the
bee, and the same empty beehive produced by man for bees can also
be a good home for them. The hive must therefore be protected
from ants.

All four wires or the legs of the hive should be protected by
insect repellents. The part of the suspension wire nearest to the
branch on which the wire hangs should be coated with thick
grease. The legs of the hive stands can also be protected with
grease, but the best insect repellent to use with hive stands is
dirty engine oil, each leg of the stand being placed in a shallow
container full of the oil. Spreading wood ash or charcoal ash
around the stand will also keep ants away.

A newly installed beehive should be visited frequently to
check whether it has been colonized by bees or ants. Destroy
every ant found in the hive.

Wax moths (Galleria
mellonella and Achroia grisella)

The wax moth is the bee's second worst enemy. There are two
types: greater and lesser wax moths. They attack colonies during
the warm periods of the year. Strong colonies are able to repel
them, but weak ones are susceptible to attack. The moth itself
does no harm to adult bees but does harm the larvae. The female,
which is slightly smaller than the honeybee, enters the hive
freely and lays her eggs in the combs. The eggs hatch in three
days, and the emerged larvae begin to eat the wax, tunnelling
through and destroying the comb cells, and spinning web-like
cocoons about themselves for protection against the bees. They
are capable of destroying all the combs in a hive. The bees may
leave the hive and cluster on a support near the apiary. If the
beekeeper's attention is drawn to this, he can sometimes prevent
the colony from absconding by cleaning all the destroyed combs
and removing all the larvae of the wax moth. The bees may return
to the hive and start all over again.

When the wax-moth reaches its pupal stage, it digs hollows in
wood for its cocoon and by doing so damages or destroys the inner
surface of the hive and the top-bars. (See Fig. 15.)

Weak colonies can be protected against wax moth by making them
strong, for example by uniting two or three colonies. The moth
usually enters a hive to lay her eggs when a colony swarms.

When strong colonies swarm, most of the bees leave the hive,
and the few which remain may not be able to cover all the combs.
Unguarded combs should be removed, stored and replaced later as
the colony increases in size.

The entrance of a weak colony should be reduced to enable the
few "security officers" to guard it effectively. Other
holes which can serve as entrances to the hive will surely be
used not only by the moth but by other hive predators as well.
Such entrances should be sealed off as soon as they are
discovered.

Lizards

Lizards, reptiles measuring about 25 cm from head to tail, are
mostly found in backyard gardens, in villages and the outskirts
of the city. The activity of the "home lizard" may
cause great concern to the beekeeper. It sometimes stays very
close to the hive or accommodates itself comfortably between the
lid and the hive body, if it can find an entrance. From that
convenient spot, it may feed indefinitely on the bees.

Even lizards not living near the hive will feed on the bees
once they can locate the apiary. Although they prefer dead bees,
they will eat live ones as well. A worker bee, acting as a
scavenger, will pounce on an old, lazy or sick bee and try to
tear the victim's wings, breaking them into pieces. While this
action is in progress, the lizard will rush in and lick both of
them up with its sticky tongue.

A serious lizard problem may lead to absconding. The simplest
and most practical protective measure is illustrated in Fig. 8 on
page 52. Beehives are installed on a platform, with metal cones
nailed on the legs about 70 cm above the ground, to prevent
lizards from reaching the hives.

Toads

Toads use the same methods as lizards, and will remain in the
apiary if they can get bees to eat. The toad generally consumes
only weak and dead bees, but if it can reach the hive, it will
eat live bees as well. The toad does not pose as many problems as
the lizard because it cannot climb. The best means of protecting
hives against toads is therefore to install them at least 60 cm
above the ground.

Snakes

Some snakes are known to eat bees. They do not cause much
damage to the colony, but the beekeeper should always be careful
to avoid being bitten by a poisonous snake near the hive.

Acherontia atropos

This large moth is well known in the forest for entering hives
between June and November. It makes a special sound which
paralyzes the bees, and they may refrain from attacking it. The
moth may then be able to load its stomach with honey. Sometimes
the bees are able to catch the moth and break it into pieces. The
dead Atropos may be found disposed of near the entrance of
the hive.

Since the wing-span of the moth is as wide as 12 cm, Atropos
cannot enter any hole which is only 8 mm in diameter. The use
of hives with slot-like entrances should be avoided if the area
is infested with this insect.

The bee pirate

A wasp-like insect with orange and black skin is sometimes
found molesting the field bees entering and leaving the hive.
This insect is usually active between October and May. There is
nothing the beekeeper can do to stop it, but it cannot cause any
great harm to a colony of bees.

The praying mantis

The praying mantis also eats bees, but this insect cannot
cause any great damage to a colony.

The spider

The spider constructs webs around in the apiary or in an empty
hive. Once the web catches bees, the spider will eat them.

All webs found in or near the apiary should be destroyed. The
hive should be cleaned and all webs found within it removed.
Otherwise, the scout bees will be caught and eaten, and no swarm
will ever take possession of the empty hive.

The Alpine swift

This bird is well known for eating bees. The birds arrive in
December and stay on for several weeks, usually causing
considerable losses.

Other organisms

There are other organisms which follow a swarm and settle with
them in the hive. Some harass the bees, and the Workers are often
found trying to drive them away.

The hive beetle (Aethina tumida): This is a
small black or brown insect with an armour-plated shell which the
honeybee is unable to crack with her mandibles or sting to death.
The beetles are found in the hive every day, and their number
increases during the honey-flow season. A colony of bees
containing large numbers of this insect produces less honey than
one of the same size without the insects. The bees try to keep
them away, but as the bees chase them out, the beetles resist and
waste the honeybees' time. There is no known way to eliminate
them.

The bee scorpion (Pseudoscorpion): This insect,
as the name implies, looks like a scorpion. It usually clings to
the legs of the bees and accompanies them to the nest. The worker
bees try to drive them away, but like the Aethina tumida, the
pseudo-scorpion will never go away.

The bee louse (Braula): One or two may be found
on a worker or drone, but more are usually found on the queen
bee, probably because the braula enjoys taking royal jelly;
hence, it would be the first to partake of the food whenever the
queen is served. The worker bees never attack them, but the queen
can be deloused by catching her and holding her between the thumb
and the middle finger, placing a live cigarette ash on the louse.
It will quickly fall off. It can also be smoked out with the
smoke of a cigarette.

Creatures found in or near the hive which constitute no danger
to honeybees are the little green lizard, wall gecko, some small
frogs and the cockroach. They are usually called the bee friends.
They eat some insects which encroach upon the hive such as the
wax moth, the house fly, the blue-bottle fly and the mosquito.
However, there is some doubt whether the cockroach is really a
good friend to the honeybee.